Oh my: Romney and Obama now in a statistical tie — in Michigan

AllahpunditPosted at 8:01 pm on June 14, 2012

That’s the good news. The better news? This isn’t the only poll lately to show a dead heat in Michigan. Ed flagged another poll last week that had the state 46/45 for Romney, i.e. within the margin of error, and noted that a writer from National Journal has heard from Republicans that their internal polling backs that up. At the moment, there’s every reason to believe this race really is that close. In Michigan.

Don’t they know that GM is alive and Bin Laden is dead?

Mitt Romney has caught President Obama in Michigan, according to a poll released Thursday.

Obama still holds a slight edge in the poll, 46.9 to 45.5, but that’s within the survey’s 2.3 percent margin of error. The poll was conducted by Michigan-based political consultants Foster, McCollum, White & Associates…

Obama once had a commanding lead over Romney in Michigan, up by double digits as recently as mid-May, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls…

Michigan has swung reliably Democratic in recent years. Obama won it by 16 points in 2008, and Romney barely won the state’s Republican primary earlier this year.

Here’s the RCP average of Michigan. It’s true that Obama led by double digits last month — in a single poll, conducted by left-leaning PPP. But the three polls before that, dating from mid-March to mid-May, had O up by only seven points, four points, and five points, respectively. I think the Obama/Romney numbers started to tighten as the GOP primaries wore on and, once Mitt was officially crowned Not Obama, the holdouts started swinging over to his side and now we’ve got a dead heat. If Team Romney and the Super PACs don’t already have money earmarked for ads in this state in the fall, they’d better hop to it.

The most interesting data point from the crosstabs? Behold:

It’s not Walkermania bleeding over from Wisconsin that’s buoying Romney here, but maybe that’s a good thing. If he was riding a wave of anti-PEU voter enthusiasm, then his chances of taking the state might depend on that wave continuing to break all the way until November — which seems unlikely. But he’s not doing that; he’s competitive despite a lack of majority support for the Walker position. That seems more sustainable. (Or am I just rationalizing to avoid coping with the fact that this state might well be ours if there was more support for Walker’s position?)